Family Pride eBook

So Bell had written to her brother, bidding him hasten
on with Katy, as she wished to see “that chit
of a widow in her proper place.” And Katy
had been weak enough for a moment to feel a throb
of satisfaction in knowing how effectually Sybil’s
claims to belleship would be put aside when she was
once in the field; even glancing at herself in the
mirror as she leaned on Wilford’s shoulder,
and feeling glad that mountain air and mountain exercise
had brought the roses back to her white cheeks and
the brightness to her eyes. But Katy wept passionate
tears of repentance for that weakness, when an hour
later she read the letter which Dr. Grant had sent
in answer to one she had written from the Mountain
House, and in which she had told him much of her life
in New York, confessing her shortcomings, and lamenting
that the evils and excesses which shocked her once
did not startle her now. To this letter Morris
had replied as a brother might write to an only sister,
first expressing his joy at her happiness, and then
coming to the subject which lay nearest his heart,
warning her against temptation, reminding her of that
other life to which this is only a preparation, and
beseeching her so to use the good things of this world,
given her in such profusion, as not to lose the life
eternal.

This was the substance of Morris’ letter, which
Katy read with streaming eyes, forgetting Saratoga
as Morris’ solemn words of warning and admonition
rang in her ears, and shuddering as she thought of
losing the life eternal of going where Morris would
never come, nor any of those she loved the best, unless
it were Wilford, who might reproach her with having
dragged him there when she could have saved him.

“Keep yourself unspotted from the world,”
Morris had said, and she repeated it to herself, asking:
“How shall I do that? How can one be good
and fashionable, too?”

Then laying her hand upon the rock where she was sitting,
Katy tried to pray as she had not prayed in months,
asking that God would teach her what she ought to
know, and keep her unspotted from the world. But
at the Mountain House it is easier to pray that one
be kept from temptation than it is at Saratoga, which
this summer was crowded to overflowing, its streets
presenting a fitting picture of Vanity Fair, so full
were they of show and gala dress. At the United
States, where Mrs. Cameron stopped, two rooms, for
which an enormous price was paid, had been reserved
for Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Cameron, and this of itself
would have given them a certain eclat, even
if there had not been present many who remembered
the proud, fastidious bachelor, and were proportionately
anxious to see his wife. She came, she saw, she
conquered; and within three days after her arrival
Katy Cameron was the acknowledged belle of Saratoga,
from the United States to the Clarendon. And Katy,
alas! was not quite the same who on the mountain ridge
had sat with Morris’ letter in her hand, praying